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Saturday night at Fifth Third Arena became a question of survival the minute that Mick Cronin decided to sit Cashmere Wright. Cronin, who is not Mike Shanahan, opted to rest arguably his best player, rather than risk Wright’s knee being donated to medical science. Good for Mick. A loss in January is a blip on the radar. Little sound and less fury. A player’s season (and beyond) is somewhat more important.

Sean Kilpatrick completed an epic evening with an epic play. He went coast to coast to score on a driving layup in overtime. The last two of his career-best 36 points gave UC a breathtaking and altogether bizarre 71-69 win over No. 25 Marquette.

Usually, you don’t approach college basketball in January with any notions of Armageddon. The best thing about the NCAA tournament is the worst thing about the regular season. Even routinely stout midseason clashes – North Carolina-Duke, Kentucky-Louisville – are muted affairs, their significance limited largely to their fans.

In college basketball, there is March. And there is everything else.

Most of the time.

Saturday night was not most of the time. It was, in fact, as good and emotional as January gets. And it came complete with the sort of impassioned strangeness that puts the Madness in March.

How, for example, does a team score 13 points in one half, as Marquette did, and 50 the next? How does a team shoot just 30 percent from the field and lead by, gulp, 16, at halftime? That was Cincinnati.

UC led 29-13 at half, owing to its tight zone defense and to the Golden Eagles, who were shooting chunks of concrete. Marquette returned the favor in the second half, when it seemed as if Kilpatrick was the only player who stood between the Bearcats and a heartbreaking loss in regulation.

Marquette had answers for lots of things that it did wrong in the first half. It had no answers for Kilpatrick.

Naturally, the game went to overtime.

To have a chance against the 25th-ranked Golden Eagles, the Cash-less Bearcats needed someone to go off. Kilpatrick did exactly that. There has never been a game in his three seasons here that Kilpatrick couldn’t score. Now that he has added defense to his plate, he doesn’t come out of games much.

UC led 8-2 when Kilpatrick scored 11 of the Bearcats next 17 points. That pushed their edge to 25-9. That’s SK 11, Marquette 7, if you’re keeping score at home. Given that Marquette didn’t seem capable of scoring 25 the entire game, that little run sealed the deal. Or so we thought.

The Bearcats came out in a zone, because Marquette shoots three-point field goals only slightly better than an elephant plays the bongos. An effective zone is like slow strangulation. It hides your weaknesses while highlighting theirs. You stay in a zone until the other guys shoot you out of it. Marquette didn’t do that in the first half Saturday. The Eagles missed all nine of their threes.

And then they played the second half.

Marquette made its first three treys after intermission. And the game was on.

More precisely, Kilpatrick was on.

Every time the visitors came close to souring UC’s evening, Kilpatrick did something important. The Golden Eagles got within 38-31, Kilpatrick answered with a three. It was 45-43, UC, when he drained a jumper and it was 47-46 when he poured in another three, this one from the key.

Kilpatrick had 25 of UC’s 50 by then, and more than six minutes still remained.

With 57 seconds left in OT, Kilpatrick beat the shot clock with a running jumper that nicked the rim twice before dropping through. That made it 68-66, UC.

Then came the clinching layup. “They was face-guarding me all night,’’ Kilpatrick said. “If they just give me a little breathing room, I’m gonna try to get the layup.’’ He got a nice screen from Kelvin Gaines and that was all it took.

UC survived. Who knows what will come of it. It’s always easier to define the effect of brutal losses than heavenly wins. The Bearcats reward for Saturday night’s gusto is a Monday afternoon game at No. 6 Syracuse.

Other players contributed. Titus Rubles made 10 free throws, six in the second half, and had 10 rebounds. David Nyarsuk had four blocks in 18 minutes. JaQuon Parker did a little bit of everything good, as usual. But it was Kilpatrick’s night.